THE SPEAKER STEPS DOWN: THE CAREER; The Fall of Gingrich, an Irony in an Odd Year

It seemed somehow the ultimate irony of this strange political year, the year stigmatized by President Clinton's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky. Instead of Bill Clinton being the one to fall, it was Newt Gingrich.

Four years after he was hailed as the visionary who won control of Congress for his party, Mr. Gingrich stepped down tonight, facing a mutiny from fellow Republicans who insisted that his flaws could cost them the very majority he had created.

In more heady days, the mercurial Georgia Republican had called himself a ''transformational figure'' and a ''definer of civilization.'' But tonight at 6:30, confronting a leadership challenge, Mr. Gingrich told House Republicans in conference calls that he was ''a target'' and would step down for the good of the party. He was not just leaving as Speaker. He was leaving Congress at the end of this year.

Republicans said that he tried to discuss his decision with dignity. But they said he could not hide his bitterness and sadness as he spoke of those who would ''cannibalize'' the party because they wanted things their way or no way.

Mr. Gingrich's sudden fall came just three days after a midterm election that dealt Republicans a setback even more unexpected than their 52-seat pickup, which he organized in 1994. But losing five seats on Tuesday was the occasion, and yet not the cause, for the antagonism that brought Mr. Gingrich's turbulent reign as Speaker to such an extraordinary end.

The anger against him had been building all year and Republicans said that by today Mr. Gingrich's troubles ran extremely deep, fueled by his miscalculations on election strategy, his persistent unpopularity with the public and his failure to rally the divided House Republicans around an agenda.

In 1994, House Republicans ran and won on an organizing theme, the ''Contract With America,'' which stressed less regulation, tax cuts, term limits and a balanced budget. And in significant ways, under Mr. Gingrich's leadership, they changed the nation's political direction. Mr. Clinton himself came to embrace their call for a balanced budget against the wishes of many Democrats and he signed into law a Republican measure overhauling the welfare law.

But once the Republicans made a sweeping agreement with Mr. Clinton in 1997 for a balanced budget with tax cuts, they seemed an ideologically spent force, unable to cohere around a broad new agenda.

Instead, the Republicans went into this year's election largely running on the past.

And the election's result provided one more reason for change. Mr. Gingrich is almost universally disliked by House Democrats, and some Republicans said that now that they have an almost unworkable six-vote majority, they need a Speaker who can work with Democrats, not infuriate them.

''What I believe desperately needs to take place is to heal the alienation that currently exists,'' said Representative Steve Largent of Oklahoma, a conservative football Hall of Famer who announced his own challenge today to Mr. Gingrich's second-in-command, Representative Dick Armey of Texas.

Mr. Largent cited the rifts not just inside the Republican caucus, but between House Republicans and Democrats, House Republicans and the White House.

The heart of the Speaker's problems, many Republicans said, is that he had never made an adequate adjustment from being the minority to being the majority, from intense backbench opposition to governing.

''Revolutionizing takes some talents, many talents,'' Mr. Gingrich's challenger, Representative Robert L. Livingston of Louisiana, said as he announced the candidacy for Speaker that drove Mr. Gingrich from office. ''My friend, Newt Gingrich, brought those talents to bear, put the Republicans in the majority. Day-to-day governing takes others.''

As a minority firebrand, Mr. Gingrich attacked Democrats, including Speaker Jim Wright, over ethics issues. Throughout 1996, the Democrats returned the favor, and as Congress convened in 1997, he was barely re-elected Speaker, and then was reprimanded and fined $300,000 for bringing discredit on the House by using tax-exempt money to promote Republican goals.

The hard-edged partisan bite that worked for Mr. Gingrich in the minority came across as stridency in power, Republicans said. ''Whenever we try to go on the offensive, the White House tries to make Newt the issue and whenever that happens we lose,'' said Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island.

In fact, Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Clinton have been locked for years in an odd symbiotic competition. It was Mr. Clinton's failed effort to pass national health care that helped bring Mr. Gingrich into the majority. It was the Speaker's gamble on shutting down the Government in the winter of 1995-96 that assured Mr. Clinton his own re-election. And this year, it was Mr. Gingrich's misreading of the public mood on impeachment that helped bring about his own demise.

But most of Mr. Gingrich's problems had nothing to do with Mr. Clinton. In a fractured Republican caucus struggling to define itself, he could never satisfy every ideological instinct and faction. So at the end, he came under attack from moderates and conservatives, and was not even defended eagerly by some of those for whom he raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign money.

Those same ideological divisions made it so hard for him to craft an agenda for his party this year, even on fiscal issues that once unified Republicans.

When Mr. Gingrich allowed Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio, the budget committee chairman, to try to rally House Republicans around a conservative blueprint for more than $100 billion in new savings, the moderates refused to back it.

When House Republicans supported a $70 billion tax cut, Senate Republicans refused to pass it. The disarray was so complete that Congress for the first time since 1974 failed to pass an actual budget.

That stalemate put the Republicans in the weakened state that left them with little alternative in October but to agree with President Clinton on a $500 billion spending bill that alienated their conservative base on the eve of the election.

Mr. Gingrich's defenders said their colleagues were being hypocrites, blaming him for their own unwillingness to compromise.

''It wasn't a problem with leadership,'' said Representative Mike Parker, a Mississippi Republican who is retiring and therefore barred from voting in the leadership election. ''It was a problem of followership. We had all these people who wouldn't get along.''

But Mr. Gingrich's critics say it was his role to bridge these divisions. ''That's the challenge of leadership,'' said Representative Marge Roukema, a Republican from New Jersey. ''I'm sorry. The Democratic Party used to be very fractured between its Southerners and the liberals. That's the challenge.''

He has had more admirers than friends among House Republicans. His raw ambition -- he wanted to be Speaker from the time he was 14 -- scared some colleagues and awed others. Some became worried by his inability to keep from sounding boastful, or as in 1995, from seeming petty, complaining about not getting a good seat on Air Force One on the way to the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. But, until today, he always rebounded because of his intellect and political skills.

When his firebrand conservatives tried to mount a coup against him in the summer of 1997,- before the balanced budget deal, he survived by drawing support from the barons of the party, the committee chairmen. And one of the most important of them had been Mr. Livingston, wholet it be known that he would wield his power over spending to keep rebels in line.

As a new rebellion brewed this week, Mr. Gingrich reached out for support. Just hours before he stepped down, his spokeswoman, Christina Martin, said he had made at least 50 calls since Wednesday and had received an overwhelmingly positive response. Other Republicans said, however, he knew that he had trouble when Representative Bill Archer, the Ways and Means chairman, who had originally promised his support, called back later today and said he had changed his mind.

''There is no doubt in my mind he had the votes to win the Speakership, but I'm not sure he had the votes to govern,'' said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff close to Mr. Gingrich. ''Some of the litmus-test Republicans were saying we want this and we want that and they were denying him the flexibility to be able to put a governing coalition together.''

So tonight he left, saying, ''I urge my colleagues to pick leaders who can both reconcile and discipline, who can work together and communicate effectively.'' He added, ''They have my prayers and my thoughts as they undertake this task.''

Correction: November 13, 1998, Friday A front-page article on Saturday about the competition for House Republican leadership positions misstated the process by which some will be filled. Only the Speaker is first nominated by the Republican caucus and then elected by the full House. Other positions, like majority leader and majority whip, are filled by vote of the caucus alone. A chronology of Newt Gingrich's career last Saturday misstated the circumstances under which he became the House Republican leader. He was chosen after the 1994 elections -- not in October 1993 when Representative Robert H. Michel of Illinois, the minority leader, announced that he would retire after the election.